“Let my soul be at rest again, for the LORD has been good to me.” Psalm 116:7
Lord Jesus, what a great and gracious Savior you are. Your patience is inexhaustible, your welcome is irrevocable, and your kindness is inextinguishable. There is no savior like you; there is no savior but you.
All work and no rest doesn’t make us ambitious, productive, or noble. It makes us foolish, shallow, and impossible to live with. Life in the Garden of Eden was kissed with rest—even before sin, idolatry, and exhaustion became issues.
Rest comes in different varieties, and you commend them all. Body-rest is important, especially deep sleep. Mental-rest de-clutters and slows down the rpms of our thinking activity–helping us be more present with people.
Soul-rest, however, is less about recovery time, and more about intimacy time. Jesus, you want us, you delight in us, and you continue to pursue us for rich fellowship. Even if we get 10 hours of sleep a night, we will remain restless until we rest (or rest again) in you
We’ll either make intentional time to spend with you, or we’ll get spent by passing trivialities, the tyranny of the urgent, and the wrong definition of success.
Soul-rest is for taking stock, doing the mercy-math, calculating all the grace-riches we have in you. To name a few—full forgiveness, constant belovedness, judgment day in our rear-view mirror, and eternal inheritance waiting for us.
Jesus, forgive us for living driven rather than called lives. Burning out, flaming out, leaking out… these aren’t heroic, they are moronic. May we rest again in you. So Very Amen
